Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (30 page)

“Katherina, it’s
too late
. God above, does your vanity really extend so far as to blind you to the difference between partiality and simple lust?” A warning tocsin sounded in some inner recess of his brain: he truly, truly oughtn’t to be speaking to her in this way. “I kissed you indeed, because that’s what a man does when a woman offers herself on a platter.”

“I didn’t offer—”

“You bloody well did.” She recoiled at the language; yanked her hands from his arm. His own hands shot out to catch her by the elbows. “And I had a good look at you in this gown because that, too, is what men do.” He stood so near her now that he could look straight down at her uncovered bosom, and he did. She was breathing hard. “I’ll wager nearly every man in the ballroom looked you over. But don’t be so foolish as to take that for a sign of regard.” He let go one elbow and skated his knuckles up her arm, catching the edges of her low sleeve in his fingers. “Every last one of them, I promise you, was calculating how to peel you out of this gown.”

He might have blocked the slap, if he’d wanted. Plenty of time. Her eyes spelled out her intention plain enough to read by moonlight even before she jerked her hand into an awkward, clearly unpracticed swing.

He let it come. Her kid-sheathed palm connected with his cheek, knocking his head to the side and smarting just enough to goad him into one more expression of his resolute indifference: he seized her at the waist, pulled her roughly up against him, and brought his mouth down hard on hers.

H
E WAS
so angry. She could feel it in the hold of his splayed fingers against the back of her head, in the tongue that had thrust itself into her mouth without any coaxing or other preamble. His other hand, without so much as a by-your-leave, snaked round behind her and pressed her, by means of an utterly indecent grip, tight against him from the waist down. And this, too, was a way to make her feel every bit of his frustration, his disgust, his regret over the years he’d wasted in harboring such futile feelings for her.

She caught his coat in fistfuls, one at the waist and the other somewhere round back. His mood didn’t frighten her, because she was angry, too: angry at his impertinence, angry at how craven she’d become, angry at the catastrophic timing that had brought her only now to realize she wanted him. Wanted him, and couldn’t have him, not only because she had a grand plan in which a barrister with unfortunate connections had no place but because she’d missed her chance. His
tendre
had persisted like a stubborn desert plant, longer than it had any reason to, until finally withering for want of sustenance.

And then she’d noticed him. It was just as he’d said, just as some presumptuous woman had said to him. She
was a shallow creature capable of wanting only those things that were beyond her reach.

Her eyes stung with tears she absolutely would not shed. She pushed up on her toes and sent her arms around his neck, to tell him she was equal to all the anger he had.

He understood. His hand flexed and resettled its grasp on her bottom, bolder even than it had been before, and his other hand came off the back of her head and found its way—her breath caught—found its way to her bosom, where he curved his palm over one breast as though it were his to do with what he wished. And then his kid-gloved fingertips traced the edge of her decolletage, and his thumb stroked over the silk, finding the shape of her nipple and rubbing it firm.

She nearly buckled to the floor. The kiss was no more than an expression of their anger; the hand at her bottom a mere impudence suited to their moods, but his thumb stopped her breath, stopped her brain, filled her insides with a million tiny shooting stars.

He felt the change in her. She could tell because he slowed and softened his kiss, teasing her lips with the tip of his tongue instead of shoving the whole thing inside. And this gave her room to answer, angling her head to encourage him, venturing her own tongue from her mouth into his.

He groaned. She could feel the sound in his belly, so close was her body pressed to his. “Katherina.” He brought his mouth clear, rested his forehead against hers, just as he’d done in that dreadful moment last week when he’d told her they must stop. “We ought to stop.” His thumb didn’t stop, though, and crushed against him as she was, she could feel the evidence of how sorry he’d be to stop now.

“Yes. When the supper dance ends, we’ll stop.” His touch made her so bold. She let her eyes flutter open,
and twisted against him like a cat seeking to be petted in the right place.

“You know this … this whole thing is impossible.” His eyelids sank half shut, and his hand on her bottom tightened to bring her writhing more particularly against him.

He was right. Everything about this was impossible. Yet here they were, and in an evening when her every glance, every breath had been an act of artifice and calculation, this one thing with him felt raw and ragged and true. “Outside this room it’s impossible, yes.” She had to make him see. “Here, though, there’s no reason why we cannot—” Her words ended in a gasp as he brought his forefinger together with his thumb and pinched her nipple through the fabric. There must be wickeder and better sensations than this, once the breeding organs were involved, but they were beyond her power to imagine.

His chest rose and fell with a great breath. He was succumbing. She knew it. “Will you come with me to the middle of the room?” He kissed her before she could make any answer. “Where the moonlight is stronger? Where I can see everything that happens on your face?”

She nodded, blood racing with equal parts triumph and apprehension. He loosened both his indecent holds on her and went to shut the door while she stepped away from the hearth, round the sofa to where light spilled through the window and made a ghostly path on the rug. The supper dance music filtered through the floor, suddenly poignant in its jolly innocence.

He turned the door handle before closing it, and turned it carefully back, to protect their privacy by preventing any sound from the latch. When he pivoted to face her, her heart swung about in her chest like the clapper of a bell, surely colliding with both her lungs. At this distance, where she could see the whole of him,
there was no mistaking the fact that his body meant to do business with hers.

“Don’t be afraid.” He approached, each step as deliberate and sure as if they’d done this together a hundred times. “We haven’t time to do anything irrevocable unless we hurry. And I don’t ever like to hurry. Even without I cared for your virtue and your prospects, you’re perfectly safe.”

I’m not. I’m lost already. I’m as wrecked and ruined as a woman can be
. “I know,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

Then he was there before her, hands rising to find a hold on her upper arms, in the space between her bracelets and the beginnings of her sleeves. He stood, merely looking. At her face, he looked, and her nearly bare shoulders, and her decolletage, and the picture she made, top to toe, when he took a half step back to get that view.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, hoarse with admiration, and for as long accustomed as she was to the fact, for as much as she’d grown to feel admiration was her due, his words made her shiver.

He touched his fingers to her chin, tipping her face up to win back her gaze, and leaned in the short distance to bring their mouths briefly together. Then he kissed her cheek. And her earlobe. And a place a little bit beneath her ear, from where he started to work his way down the side of her neck, unhurriedly, as though they had all the time in the world instead of the remaining span of one dance. “So, so beautiful,” he whispered somewhere in between kisses.

Yes. She was. How clever of him, to put her at ease by repeating a fact of which she was most sure, and how crafty, to say the words in a way that made the fact sound wondrous and new. “Will you take off your coat?” She found his buttons with her fingertips. That would tell
him, in terms palatable to masculine ears, that she liked the sight of him, too.

His fingers tangled with hers over the buttons. One hand only: he kept the other at her shoulder, and kissed his way back up her neck to her ear even as they got all the buttons undone. As though he couldn’t bear to stop kissing her long enough to give his full attention to the coat.

He did pull away from her when the time came to shrug out of the sleeves and toss the coat over the back of the sofa. She put up a hand to stop him from coming back to her, and kept him there at arm’s length while she made a survey of his coatless self. Waist, chest, shoulders; the arms half lifted, ready to reach for her; the simple folds of his cravat. Chin. Mouth. Eyes. All of it so familiar, and yet so strange.

She moved a step nearer and lifted her hand from his chest to his cheek, the one she’d slapped. She couldn’t quite believe she’d done it, and yet she couldn’t be sorry for it, either. Not when it had made him kiss her.

He smiled, as though he understood her thoughts. His hand rose and settled on her wrist, stroking up the kid leather until her glove gave way to bare flesh. The sofa, facing away, was a step or so behind him: he walked backward, towing her by his hold at her elbow, and sank to a perch on the sofa’s back. “Come closer, Kate.” He planted his feet apart to make room. And when she came closer, stepping into the fraught intimate space between his knees, he had to bend only a little forward to kiss her collarbones.

And then to kiss her bosom. Scarcely breathing, she followed his progress as he covered seemingly every inch of flesh the gown left bare. Across, a bit lower, and then back up again as though his very purpose was to drive her insane. His hands meanwhile swept up to cup her, and his thumbs, both his thumbs at once, commenced
the same sweet wickedness through silk that he’d committed when they stood by the hearth.

She felt for a grip on his shoulder and splayed the fingers of her other hand on the back of his head.
Yes. Do that. Don’t stop
.

He made a sound, when her hand tightened on his shoulder, but he didn’t stop. His tongue came out to trace a path across the rise and fall of her flesh, and she wanted … oh, she didn’t even know what it was she wanted; she didn’t have the words.

But he knew. He lifted his head and watched her face, his eyes burning as his immensely clever fingers slipped one breast free of her bodice. Then he dipped his head and kissed what he’d exposed. “I’ve wanted to do this.” His whispered breath on her flesh felt so dreadfully intimate. “God, Kate, you’ve no idea how I’ve wanted this.” He kissed her nipple again, and this time he touched her with his tongue. Delicately, at first. Then less so.

She stood, not breathing at all now, paralyzed by shock and pleasure. The sight of him, head bent with such sinful, private purpose, her hand spread out over his close-shorn scalp as though to urge him on, stirred up strange, ferocious hungers in the pit of her belly and below. She wanted to caress him with infinite tenderness. She wanted to tear him limb from limb.

Want
. The word was in her every thought now, and apparently in his as well.
You’ve no idea how I wanted this
. People got into trouble this way. Men and women threw away judgment, and their good names with it, because they lost the ability to think of anything but satisfying that aching want.

She sucked in a sharp breath, because she’d gone too long without one. He’d apparently only been waiting for such a sound: he took it for permission, and in a rush of movement too quick for her to parse, he had her off
her feet, over the back of the sofa, and then flat on the cushions underneath him, part of his weight braced on his arms, the rest pinning her gloriously down. He took liberties with her bodice again, bringing the other breast out, and when he put his mouth to this one she could only pray he wouldn’t try anything further, because she mightn’t have the strength any longer to stop him.

He brought his mouth away and shifted his hips. “Put your legs apart.” His voice was terse and intent.

No
. Strength and good sense came roaring back from their slumber: she could not let this happen. It was different for him; it was just a diversion, but she’d have
nothing
if she gave away her virtue here. She squirmed to get out from under him, pushing at his shoulders, panic narrowing her throat. “No,” she said, the syllable thin and high-pitched.

“Wait. Listen. Katherina. Wait. Trust me. Listen, please.” Barely enough moonlight fell over the sofa’s back to show her his face, drawn with urgent conviction. “I won’t lift your skirts, I promise. I won’t undo a single one of my buttons. Only let me be against you. Here.” He flexed his hips, either to show her what was meant by
here
, or for the sheer animal pleasure of it. “Only for a minute or so. Only as long as you like it.”

He looked so serious. As though everything in his world depended on her saying yes. That was how it was for men, according to Penelope Towne.

I don’t have the necessary feelings anymore
, he’d said. To stop him now would be a kindness. He wouldn’t like to look back later and see how his base, ungovernable lusts had overridden both his judgment and the sentiments of his heart. Nor would she like to remember this incident with a suspicion that he’d spent on her only what he’d been cheated of spending on his auburn-haired lady friend.

“Only for a minute,” she said nevertheless. She might
have regrets afterward, and so might he, but at least she didn’t fear for her virtue. She knew him. If he said he wouldn’t lift her skirts, he wouldn’t. Of that she was resoundingly sure.

She moved her leg to give him the space he wanted. She’d supposed she might set that foot on the floor, the sofa being too narrow to otherwise allow much distance between her knees, but he had other ideas. He caught her leg behind the knee and angled it up and around, wrapping it behind his own leg. Her hips tilted with the action and he settled himself and resettled himself against her, studying her face with each adjustment as if he were expecting to see some particular—

Oh.
Oh
. Her breath caught in her throat and she could feel her eyes go wide.